Musical Intervals

A musical interval is the difference in pitch between two sounds. Listen carefully to the following audio clip:

You have just heard 5 sounds. After the first sound, the second one is higher in pitch, the third lower, the fourth even lower and finally the fifth is slightly higher. So, some sounds are higher, some lower and when sounds follow one another as you heard earlier, these pitch differences create musical intervals.

Musical intervals are not produced randomly, there are well defined mathematical ratios between sounds’ pitches (at a physical level we are speaking of sound frequencies, see also the article Musical Sounds)

A special relationship exists between two sounds whose pitch ratio is 2/1. In this situation we say that we have as interval an octave and that actually the two sounds are identical (although, technically speaking, they are not). Please listen to the audio bellow, where first you will hear a sound, followed by a sound twice as high in pitch. Then, you will hear both at the same time and you will have the sensation of hearing a single sound.

 

 

Next, we will show intervals, as they are defined by music theory. In the future, we will look deeper into the subject as there is a lot to be told about. Now, it is important to hear them and to be able to recognize each interval. Besides the name of the interval, we have put in brackets the abbreviation of it and the mathematical ratio between pitches. The audio clip shows the interval melodic (ascending and descending) and harmonic (both sounds at the same time). The image shows the interval in musical notation.

If you already know musical intervals and want to test your abilities, at the end of this article you will find a link with a test for musical intervals.

Perfect unison (P1   1/1)

Unison is actually the same sound (with the same pitch) repeated, so in fact we can’t hear any difference between the two sounds.

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Minor second (m2   16/15)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Major second (M2   9/8)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Minor third (m3   6/5)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Major third (M3   5/4)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Perfect fourth(P4   4/3)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Augmented fourth (A4  45/32)

It is called also diminished fifth (d5) or triton.

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Perfect fifth (P5   3/2)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Minor sixth (m6   8/5)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Major sixth (M6  5/3)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Minor seventh (m7   9/5)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Major seventh (M7  15/8)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

Perfect octave (P8   2/1)

MusicSheetViewerPlugin 4.1

These are the musical intervals and if you want to test your hearing abilities for musical intervals, you can take the following test:

Ear Training – Musical Intervals